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Thursday, March 14, 2013

Never be Lacking in Zeal

I have only been a mom for 7 months but it has not been
without its struggles. Going into this stage of life there were the obvious
challenges like the lack of sleep but I quickly realized that there were many challenges I didn’t foresee such as
staying home all day yet some how not getting around to cleaning one single
dish in the sink or washing just one of the hundred loads of laundry. I
embarrassingly thought being a stay at home mom would be easier than a
kindergarten teacher and I pushed it as far as to think I’d actually be bored
at home with nothing to do. If you know me you know I never get bored, I’m
always busy with something so this was a legitimate concern for me. Now you
veteran moms are probably smiling and nodding knowing exactly where I am going
with this. Yes, I couldn’t be any farther off base.

Early Earlier in motherhood I sat at my newly joined
mom’s group through church sharing how apologetic I was with my husband each
night when he stepped through the door and it didn’t look like I had done
anything. I do have to quickly preface
that nothing about Christopher prompted me to do this, just my nature and he
always responded with, “my son is alive and thriving so you’ve done a great
job.” Love him. Anyways at group no sooner had I finished sharing my
apologetic ways did another mother respond to me with, “It takes a lot of work
to make it look like you have done nothing!” I sat on this a bit and realized
it was so true!

I acknowledged that raising our son is serving the Lord but
it took some time to believe that my place in the home is not below my place in
the classroom when it comes to being a servant to the Lord. To view spending my
days mainly nursing and washing diapers just as important as reaching the
hearts and minds of a classroom of little ones is still hard to accept some
days, however this verse from Romans 12:11 has brought a lot of calm and
confidence to the many questioning areas of my heart.

My blog name actually grew out of my desire to make the most
out of every and any situation - to root where I’m at and flourish, and it was
great to recently come across scripture to reinforce this. Now I’m certainly no
theologian but my take away from this scripture is that no matter what it is we
find ourselves doing in our day to day lives each moment is meant to be in
honor of God even if that is cleaning spit up off my shirt for the third time
in the hour. And instead of getting hot and bothered by having to change yet
another t-shirt (or having to work harder to ignore the smell coming from my
shirt because I just don’t have the energy or the time to change…) be thankful
that I have clothing to get soiled or
even the option to change if I really wanted to!

I love the word zeal, it paints such a beautiful picture of
service: never lacking in energy or enthusiasm. That’s the mom and wife I want
to be. Or course I’m broken, forever a sinner saved by grace but that doesn’t
mean I can’t strive for this. I have fallen in love with this scripture in the
last couple weeks and it has really changed my perspective on the now. I hope
you find some encouragement in it as well.

I turned the above image into a {printable}, feel free to print it out and stick it up somewhere as a reminder!